Barack on Board

It should be made clear from the very beginning that I am not what you call a Bumper Sticker Person. Bumper Stickers have always seemed, to me at least, the adhesive-backed embodiment of the sentiment contained within the phrase “Better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” While I adored stickers of all kinds as a child (and still do, now that I think about it), I never saw the point of a small piece of paper as the vehicle (har, har) for expressing one’s sexuality/ideology/politics/religion/sports-team-affiliation.

This is because I am what is known as “snooty.”

Last night, however, something changed. While opening the mail, I discovered my Barack Obama bumper sticker had arrived from MoveOn.org, and as I looked down at it, I thought to myself, “Really? A bumper sticker? Are we this person? What’s next, mud flaps with sexy girlies on them?”

Form AND function.

Despite my innate snootiness and fear of what might come next (I’m fine with the mudflaps, but what if I suddenly find myself saying “NASCAR? Yeah, that might be a sport.” with a straight face?), I cast my fears aside. I busted out my Simple Green cleanser and recycled paper towels, walked out the back door, and wiped clean a small area of Lola’s rear panel (before you get too excited, friends, Lola is my 2000 Bravada, not some exceptionally dirty girl with an environmentalist fetish).

8 Comments

I’m concerned that you missed the actual bumper with the bumper sticker.

I wanted to make a “leans to the right” joke, but you beat me to it.

Should I say, “crooked as a politician?” Maybe that’s too forward.

I don’t know what to say about Obama, except that anything is better than Bush. Jack Russel Terriers, a statue of Ernest Borgnine, a reanimated Ronald Regan, a picture of Black Jesus, Richard Nixon’s head in a jar… all of these things would make a better president than Bush has been in the last five or six years. What were the American people thinking when they voted him into office….

Oh yeah… that’s right. They didn’t.

Obama stands for change, and change is what we desperately need. McCain might actually be a decent president, but I’m so sick and tired of Republican bullshit that I can’t take it anymore. I might actually do something as rash as actually voting this year.

I’ve always thought it would be funny to have a bumper sticker that says something like “Bumper stickers are lame”. I’ve never been a fan of bumper stickers, and mostly I make fun of people who have them. But I think I understand why you’ve succumbed to this bumper sticker, because I too considered getting one with my Obama donation. Then I remembered how much I hate bumper stickers and the temptation abated.

Just don’t turn into one of those embarrassing souls who are still proudly sporting W04 stickers. I want to smack those people upside the head.

Words cannot convey the searing, white-hot loathing I have for the “W04”-tards.

Verily, even if I must take a torch, chisel and liberal coating of whatever the hell they use to make Dave’s Insanity Sauce to Lola’s back panel, I have declared I shall not become as those who must bear the millstone of my odium.

Oh, and I didn’t put it on the bumper because I didn’t want it to get too dirty…I figure Obama will have his name dragged through enough mud this Autumn without my help.

I look at McCain, and I think “Damn it, if you were only a few hundred years younger and could live up to your “Maverick” legend in truth as well as rhetoric, I’d vote for you.” Seriously, what’s his middle name – Imhotep? Still, I read a fascinating (if somewhat doting) interview with McCain’s MOTHER in Vogue this month. She’s 1,000 years old (actual age: 96) and still zipping around like she’s a spry youngster in her 60s. If nothing else, Clan McCain has some rockin’ longevity genes.

I spend a lot of time trying to convince people to just vote. Just get up and go vote. I don’t care if you go in and write in Mickey Mouse for everything. Just get off your lazy ass and go vote.

As for bumper stickers, well, yours is the sort of car I can’t drive behind because it makes me twitch to see crooked bumper stickers. And I too am concerned that you totally missed the actual bumper.

That said, how odd is it that Barack Obama has brought out such a willingness in all of us to openly support him? I actually went to his site to order a tee shirt, just so that I could be contributing a bit to his campaign fund. I have never even considered given a politician money before.

In the end, all the shirts were sold out, but the point is that I would have bought one had they had one. And I would have worn it as well. And if we have a candidate that inspires us to do things that we wouldn’t normally do to support him it only makes sense that as president he could lead us and inspire us as well. I cannot bear to listen to McCain for four years. He is as arrogant and senseless as Bush.

I’m fairly certain Cindy McCain was created in a government lab. “We need someone who has the appearance of a trophy wife, but also visibly radiates menace and a cat-like mockery of the prey that surrounds her.”

As for the crookedness of the sticker, well, all I can say is that I was so swept up in Obama-fever that I giddily slapped it onto Lola without a thought for the comfort of those who would be sent into paroxysms of OCD twitchery by its slight tilt. I was mad, I tell you – MAD! Also, I refer you to my earlier remark regarding mud and the avoidance thereof.

I made my contribution and bought Obama buttons rather than a t-shirt. He IS inspirational, and progressive, and, yes, a smidge arrogant and presumptive at times…but I think that’s the flipside of the charisma coin. Here we have a candidate that has enflamed both sides with his passion, with his vigor, with his ability to make a three-point shot on the first try on a Kuwaiti basketball court…and it’s been so long since the moribund, juiceless body politic of our country has had anything other than ichor and oil flowing through its veins that I for one cannot wait to see what heights we will be inspired to reach if and when he is elected.

Giant billboards, not so much. Unless it’s one of those comical “Don’t Make Me Come Down There!” billboards erected by well-meaning but hopelessly clue-free churches. Because nothing fills me with both amusement and queasiness like a thinly veiled, sitcom-dad-ish threat by the Almighty.

You know, it’s weird, but I have the GUTS of a 1986 Trans Am in MY yard! We should totally get together! Do you have your own concrete blocks, or will I need to bring mine?